What is interesting is, looking at their respective websites, the Tories and Liberals differ considerably in font choices. The Conservatives like bold capital letters and sans serif fonts. The Liberals don't capitalize as much and use a lot of serifs.

I think this somewhat reflects their governing style. Conservatives believe that there is moral clarity about right and wrong. For them the job of government is to have a clear big picture vision, even if all the details aren't always worked out.

For Liberals, government is the process of cobbling together enough people (enough visions of right and wrong) behind a set of policies. Details and nuances are the stuff of politics. Indeed, serif fonts are more readable in big blocks of text (they enable you to use smaller font sizes to you can fit more on a page too - Times New Roman being one of the most space-efficient), but look worse as say, headlines.

What about the NDP? Ironically, when it comes to font choices, they are much more similar to the Conservatives than the are to the Liberals. I think that is a meaningful distinction.

I dislike the new Liberal logo, but that is probably because I'm a Tory.

And Werner, its gotta be red - that colour is part of a brand that goes back to confederation (when the Liberal party was made up of classical Liberals). Hell the party used to be called Rouge in Quebec. So you are both factually wrong and misguided.

That leaf looks a lot like what my hubby rakes up daily in the fall.How much did this logo cost and who got the contract. A quebec firm by any chance. What a waste of money, any kid in kindergarten could do a better job. Of course they couldn't display the flag in any manner, or the maple leaf. It would offend quebec. Is the Canadian Flag displayed in any school in Quebec. We all know the word liberal and we all know about leaves blowing in the wind. And why isn't Canada on it somewhere.

That is a very weak logo, and a very long stem on that tiny fig leaf. Oh, I mean maple leaf.

Liberal conventions exist for one reason: to demonstrate, every so often, what a terrible choice the current leader is compared to Chretien.

Now that it's all over -- if this is how the "new", reorganized and reorganizing Liberal party handles a major event -- I don't think the Tories have anything to worry about. No election until at least fall 2010, and not a lot of anything between now and then. Even diehards must be getting pretty sad about the state of affairs.

All these comments about how weak the Liberal Party is are absolutely false. The party now has better database software than the Conservatives, better fundraisers, and a much better leader. Obviously the party doesn't have the same capacity, as the Conservatives, to fight an election at this moment, but just wait. The party increased its fund raising amounts to over 100% of last year, while the Conservatives decreased their amounts. While I'm not too sure about what this logo is all about, I certainly don't buy for a second the argument that the Liberal Party is down and out, that is where the Conservative Party will be at this time next year. Observers can't expect the party to change dramatically in one weekend, but overall the party has shown a strong commitment to change and actually has morals, unlike Stephen Harper.

How can you say that the Liberals have better fundraisers? They may have gone up a lot compared to last year's Q1 results, but that's only because last year's were so pathetically low to begin with. The Conservatives still more than doubled the Liberals so far this year.

And what database software do the Liberals and Conservatives use, and how do you know whether one is better than the other?

I think it's really ugly, and not graphically powerful either. Not to mention that it's not going to be legible on an election sign from 50 metres, we'll have to rely on the red colour. The previous logo was way better. I like this colour better, more scarlet than purple, in-your-face Liberal.

Also, Invisible Hand, you don't know that the Conservatives more than doubled the Liberals.Sure I do. It says so on Elections Canada's site. :)

They almost definitely out-fundraised the Liberals, but the margin might not be as dramatic as you assume.

Parties only report how much they take in, not how much it costs them to raise that money. The direct mail heavy Conservatives spend far more money per fundraised dollar than the Liberals.Since parties don't report their fundraising costs, how do you know that the Conservatives spend more per dollar raised, or that they're more direct mail-heavy?